Australian Cop Fired For Marijuana

David Tredinnick was just your average veteran police sergeant with an “undisputed abhorrence” to drugs, when the Australian was called in to police a drug raid—and ended up with cannabis in his system.

That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it.

The Daily Telegraph brings us the tale of Tredinnick, who found himself drug-tested six days after a May 2014 raid. The newspaper doesn’t say why the policeman was made to pee, but pee he did—and he peed dirty.

Tredinick’s urine had 185 micrograms of cannabis per liter (Mg/l), according to the Daily Telegraph—which reported that figure as low.

For our American audience, the standard for drug testing is nanograms of cannabis metabolite per milliliter of urine (ng/ml). While conversions in units of measurement aren’t our thing, we have access to Google and a very sophisticated slide rule that runs Windows 10.

Since 185 micrograms is 185000 nanograms, and there are 1,000 milliliters in a liter, one can deduce that Tredinnick had something along the lines of 185 nanograms of THC metabolite per milliliter of urine, if the Telegraph’s figures were reported correctly.

Keep in mind that a driver in Washington or Colorado can receive a “marijuana DUI” if they submit to a blood test and it comes back at 5 ng/ml, and an NFL player can be suspended if a urine sample comes back at 35 ng/ml. At the same time, a regular user of cannabis could expect to have a background level of 1,000 nanograms per milliliter, according to NORML’s drug testing guidelines, or more than five times what Tredinnick had in his system.

Anyway. Despite an initial urine test coming back negative and Tredinnick’s hair also testing negative for any evidence of cannabis use, the heavy pee test was enough to cost him his job.

He appealed the decision and attempted to get his job back via an appeals court, whom he told why he tested positive: He’d handled “wet, sticky” raw cannabis “without gloves” on that police raid.

Forensic toxicologists said that Tredinnick’s urine sample is consistent with someone who had used marijuana “deliberately” a day or two before the test, so the appeals tribunal ruled against him. He is still no longer a police officer, meaning he is free to handle as much fresh weed without gloves as he likes. He apparently knows what he’s doing with cured bud ready to smoke, so there’s that.

Apparently, cannabis-using cops are a bit of a thing in Australia. In another, unrelated matter, a second police sergeant was successful in getting his job back after failing to report other cops had eaten hash cookies while out on a “boys weekend” with other cops, according to the Telegraph.

This particular cops-night-out drew the attention of other police, whose internal affairs unit thought enough of it to secretly bug their brother officers. The bugged recording revealed that the second sergeant said, “I had one bit… and thought oh f–…..” but that wasn’t enough to convince the tribunal he’d eaten of the cookies, the Telegraph reported.

In a twist, police are appealing that decision, trying to get that sergeant to stay fired. In other news, we hear Australian police can be a lot of fun.